大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Torunn Kjolberg and has been added to the website on behalf of Ken Head with his permission and he fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was a flight engineer and in a raid to Leipzieg, I鈥檓 coming back and we got the wrong winds and I said to my skipper we are going to get down and we landed in a field nose down. Fortunately the bomb wasn鈥檛 in the nose and we were all ok. Because our plane had to be repaired we took another bomber . On that particular night we took a spare gunman with us 鈥擲ergeant Turner, I didn鈥檛 know his name until after the war, because on that particular night he was killed. It was on his first trip that was. All the rest of the crew were killed except the navigator and myself. I bailed out at about 18 000 feet. We got hit and tried to do a nosedive to put out the flames, but it was no use so the skipper said to me: 鈥渂ail out鈥�. I felt a kick in my back and it was the navigator kicking me out of the plane.
I hit a roof of a very tall building and I slid off the roof into someone鈥檚 back garden. But it was concreted and on my way down I lost my flying boot so it did my knee in. I suddenly hear footsteps and I am standing in the middle of the road -and remember I鈥檓 only 19 or 20. I鈥檓 in the Alsace reign near Metz. Hearing some people, I stepped into the road and said can you help me? They just ran. So I thought to myself -what can I do? So I started walking up the road. Suddenly their home guards 鈥攖he Vermacht grabbed hold of me and took me back to their office and whilst I was there my Navigator came in. From there we were taken to the local station where we were interviewed. I asked if I could see my Skipper, but they said I'd best remember him as he was. I was in terrible pain and couldn鈥檛 walk because of my knee so they had to carry me everywhere.
They sent me to the interigation centre. You give your name, rank and number. The guy who was interviewing me 鈥攁 German, used to live in Brighton and also he told me that my brother was in Canada training to be in the Airforce. I knew my brother was in the Airforce, but I didn鈥檛 know he鈥檇 gone to Canada. Anyway I didn鈥檛 believe him.
From there they took us up to a place in East Prussia. We were about 60 to 80 blokes to a hut. We were digging tunnels there. Eventually the Russians started coming along and they moved us on to a place in Poland called Torun. And we were there for a while, then the Russians started coming again. And we were moved again by cattle truck. That was an horrendous journey. It was about 80 blokes in a truck. You鈥檝e probably seen it on telly and it鈥檚 the truth -that鈥檚 how it was. We were moved to a place in Schelzwig-Holstein. When we went in there it was a pretty place but after a short while we tore it to pieces because we had no timber. We used something called a blower to do our cooking on. The blower was a 鈥淜lim-can鈥� 鈥攁 powdered milk can which came by the Canadian food parcels. We used to get one meal a day from the Germans and a seventh of a loaf of bread. I was celebrating my 21st birthday in a POW camp.
But then the British were coming along so they moved us out again but this time we were walking and they moved us over the Elbe. We were on the road for a bout six to eight weeks, sleeping in the hedges, in barns -wherever we could lay our heads.
I can never remember I changed my underpants and that kind of thing. We used to have to carry the German鈥檚 rifles for them because the German soldiers were so bloody old. We were walking up to Rostock. They tried to move all the British prisoners up there and use us for bartering. We got shot at by the British, I think 50 POWs got killed that day and two Germans.
But we knew that the Germans were finished.

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